This is a disgusting,
disgraceful and despicable article.
Mwanga II had at least 30
of his pageboys executed for refusing his sexual advances.
Why is The Guardian extolling a mass-murdering,
paedophile rapist as an African gay icon?
Shame.
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It's not about extolling anyone as a gay icon. It's about asserting that there were indigenous forms of non heterosexual sexual and romantic behaviour in Africa before European colonialism.
ReplyDeleteWhether the individuals whose same sex behaviour is actually documented were good or bad has no relationship with the above point. Indeed, even the morality itself of same gender 'sexual systems' in Africa pre conquest can be called in doubt, without negating the essential point, which is that those systems did (and in some cases, do) exist.
I tried, sadly to little avail, to intervene in the FB combox on this article with some factual and historical background, particularly that Christianity had been present in Africa practically since Christianity's inception (Alexandria being one of the Five Patriarchates), and that Axum had been converted to Christianity in 330 AD - without any colonial violence whatsoever. The men and women who converted the African East were most likely not 'Western', and they were certainly not white!
ReplyDelete(Interestingly, most of the folks who 'liked' my comments appeared to be sub-Saharan Africans.)
But yes, this article is complete bilge. Sad that the Guardian should be developing into such a historically-illiterate outlet.